


Underrail: Gyrus

by UnderRunner



Category: Room of Swords (Webcomic), UnderRail (Video Game)
Genre: Blood and Gore, F/M, Major spoilers for Underrail and Underrail: Expedition, Psychic Abilities
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:35:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26438044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnderRunner/pseuds/UnderRunner
Summary: After having killed Tchort and retrieving the cube Gyrus had believed that he was done with his quest, how wrong he was.
Relationships: Gyrus Axelei/Tori Grieve
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	1. Death of an ancient

Gyrus had just finished the preparations for his final battle, now he stands atop the ladder it being the only thing between him and Tchort. He stands there for another minute, phase pistol in hand as he steels himself and grabs the first rung, the trip was short and he knew he was in the right place when the overpowering stench of mutated flesh permeated his senses.

When he finally reached the bottom he was met with the wretched sight of Tchort glaring at him with its one colossal, red, malformed eye. To the side were eight of its tentacles four of which were covered with red spots and limp, clearly the mutagen he injected into the tanks was taking effect.

An overwhelming voice pierces his mind saying “ **We were expecting the high one, we’ve been starving ourselves for him. And yet we receive you instead, you disgusting, tainted creature! No matter, you will sate us for the time being.** ” it’s fairly obvious to Gyrus that Tchort was just speaking to him, he can’t think of a time he’s feared for his life more than right now as he faces the ancient creature.

At this moment one of the living tentacles burst from the ground heaving a glob of acid directly at Gyrus; as he dodges he begins charging the godmen artifact the ethereal torch, at the same time with the other hand he aims his phase pistol and fires at the tentacle blowing a chunk out of it as blood and acid spill out of the wound, but it began knitting itself back together.

As soon as Gyrus shot he started running to eye with the still charging ethereal torch in hand, he knew he didn’t have long the tentacle finished healing. With the eye fifty feet away he feels something tear into his side causing him to stumble and fall to the ground, at the same time he hears a rapid series of soft footsteps.

“Scanner.” And true enough a tchortling scanner was scampering towards him and he knows that if it gets too close that’s it; Gyrus reaches into the depths of his mind invoking raw psionic power as he forces his hand holding his phase pistol towards the tchortling scanner and pure destructive energy floods out obliterating the horrid creature.

Having bought himself more time he looks around to gauge his current situation; The tentacle he shot is almost done regenerating, there is another tentacle twenty feet back, and there appears to be a devourer on its way. He sees the closer tentacle compressing, he assumes that this means it’s readying to attack so he gets back up and starts running again before it can.

Now thirty feet directly ahead him is the eye of Tchort with two tentacles at its side, the ethereal torch is now burning his fingers but he still holds it tight as he aims his phase pistol at one of the tentacles next to Tchort and fires, his aim was true and managed to completely sever one half of the tentacle from the other.

“ **How dare you harm my magnificent form you filth?! I have survived for centuries, yet you believe that you have a chance of doing anything permanent?** ” Tchort’s disgusting voice once again permeates Gyrus’ mind; with the eye just ten feet away from him he leaps dropping the phase pistol and grasping the artifact with both hands and drives it into the eye he feels the viscous ooze composing the eye as it begins shifting around trying to throw him off but he holds strong, with one final push when it reaches the deepest he activates it.

As soon as he activates it he is thrown back by an incredible force in the wake of blinding blue light and in the last moment of his conciseness all Gyrus heard were the last gurgling screeches of Tchort. Gyrus doesn’t know how long he had been out but when he stood back up he saw a massive crater where Tchort once was, he began walking to it and stood over it looking at the seemingly unharmed ethereal torch.

Seeing his weapon in the crater he climbed in and grabbed it, just like before it was cold to the touch. As he climbs out he sees a familiar dim teal icosahedron. “The cube, finally” with his journey finally close to being done he gleefully grabs the cube and his damaged phase pistol and heads back up the ladder. When he reaches the top and gets ready to head to the elevator out of the deep caverns he comes across a group of heavily armed, masked cyborgs, the faceless.

The commander walks forward and holds out his hand saying. “The cube” Gyrus knew this was coming but he was still disappointed he didn’t get more time to study it. Gyrus gets it out and hands it over saying. “Please make sure Lora can make it home” The commander nods and gets out of Gyrus’ way.

The journey to the elevator was a short and quiet one, as he got into the elevator and went up there was a sudden bright flash, and in front of him stood the godman, Rahm-Umbra. The two of them stood there in silence until Gyrus said. “You were right, the only way to get the cube was to kill Tchort, thank you.” Rahm nods and replies with. “I’m glad you understood your position, but we have more pressing matters, Hadrian Tanner.”

Gyrus is taken aback, he had known Tanner was up to something but to have Rahm believe he needed to intervene was truly concerning. But then it hits him, Rahm was the one to have given the faceless the cube and yet somehow Tanner had known to send Lora to retrieve it, despite the fact there would be no possible way for him to have known they had it.

“From the clues I picked up and you bringing him up I’m thinking he has a far larger role than I originally suspected.” Rahm nods. “It seems that you’ve already put together most of the puzzle, good, but before you go ahead and pat yourself on the back I must tell you that Tanner has already fled the SGS.”

Gyrus having heard enough decides to finally ask. “Why are you telling me this? I’ve seen you enough to know you don’t tell people things unless you have to.” Rahm waits for a minute before telling Gyrus the entire point of the conversation thus far.

“I need you to head towards the north underrail, it’s where Tanner is headed and I can tell that I will require your assistance with my task.” This is the first Gyrus has heard of this so he asks. “What would this task happen to be?” Even with four lenses instead of eyes Gyrus can still tell that Rahm is staring directly at him “The assassination of Hadrian Tanner, I would explain more however we are out of time, I look forward to seeing you again, and when you reach the hexagon ask to see Six.”

And with that Rahm disappears in a bright flash leaving Gyrus to think on what he had just been told before he even had enough time to contemplate what he’d just been told he arrives at the lower caves south of the SGS, his home. When he opens the front gates he’s being told by Malcolm that the whole station is in a panic and that Vera had requested him, when Gyrus made his way to Vera’s office she started asking him questions in rapid-fire but Gyrus couldn’t answer as his mind was plagued by a single question. “Should I go.”

When his mind returned it took him a little to catch up but Vera had just asked him if he could investigate Tanner’s room for clues, being just as if not more so curious Gyrus agrees and heads to the room. When he finally gets there he’s met by Ezra who hands him the key and tells Gyrus that he’ll be waiting outside, the inside of the room is by no means interesting but one thing catches Gyrus’ eye, a single flickering spot on a holo-picture.

Gyrus decides to try putting his hand through it to see if there was a clue and was met with a space that went far beyond the rest of the wall, thinking he just found a massive clue Gyrus tries crawling in but nothing could’ve prepared him for what he saw on the other side. A room filled with complex machinery, a workstation, and most curiously a mask that perfectly mimicked that of a human face

After the initial shock passes he takes a closer look at the machinery he realized it was the same stasis pod he had found when he first met Rahm, his eyes widen as he makes the conclusion that was staring him in the face

“Tanner is one of them” Gyrus stood there motionless for minutes until he heard the raspy voice of Ezra calling for him, silently he crawled out of the room and was face to face with Ezra. “What happened Gyrus?” for now Gyrus decides it would be best if he just told Vera what was going on.

After he left Ezra and told Vera what was going on minus the part with Rahm he headed to his room and checked his email one last time. There was one from Vera

From: Vera

Subject: Administration

Gyrus I understand a lot has been going on and that’s why I sent this to you. We need you right now with the whole station in an uproar with Tanner leaving, but you’re here, they think of you as a hero. That’s why I’m extending this offer, Gyrus Axelei of South Gate Station would you accept the position of a counselor of SGS?

While very flattered by the idea of being considered for the auspicious position of counselor Gyrus knew that he was needed where Tanner was lest he cause more chaos, after writing a polite denial Gyrus takes the elevator down to the train platform and begins his ride to the northern Underrail.

He had a godman to catch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Terms/Characters  
> Underrail: A series of interconnected cave systems and metros that make up the known world
> 
> Rahm-Umbra: An extremely tall cyborg who is suspected of being part of a species known as the godmen, instead of a face he has a metal plate with four lenses.
> 
> Faceless: A secluded group of cyborgs who are believed to have made their home in the deepest caverns


	2. New enemies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Gyrus finally reaches the northern underrail will the events of his arrival be the beginning of an unfortunate trend? Spoiler alert, yes

When Gyrus’s senses return he finds himself standing on a weird green thread-like substance when he looks to the ceiling and instead of seeing the rock ceiling like normal he sees a neverending blackness. Gyrus immediately knew what was going on, ever since he’d first attuned himself to the Shadowlith he’s been having these strange visions. Now that he’s here he might as well try to find some meaning behind these visions, he begins walking, and as he moves forward the ground behind him fades and the ground rises from the nothing in front of him.

He doesn’t know how long he’s been walking as the repetition lulls him into a daze as he doesn’t even realize when the ground completely disappears as he keeps walking on. He finally comes to a stop when he finds the first thing he saw in the Shadowlith, a stream of pure liquid color. Gyrus decides to sit down and start examining the stream as this may be the purpose of this vision, even though this whole vision had been very confusing for him he still smiles thinking “Huh, even with what this was connected to I can’t help but admit it’s nice to look at”

He keeps staring at the stream until he hears a sudden rumbling sound, looking to his right he sees a massive flood of colors as he sighs and mumbles “Of course, can’t have one ni-!” he’s interrupted as the flood slams into him.

* * *

He jolts awake in his seat when he sees where he is, he begins patting himself around to make sure he wasn’t affected by his visions again, he sighs with relief when he finds everything is perfectly fine. As he realizes that he’s still on the metro he quickly looks to the window to see if he missed his stop, he is met with the peculiar sight of an open cavern filled with stone brick homes some of which were connected to small pens filled with pigs and even a few cave hoppers.

The train continues on its route to The Hexagon, Gyrus notes that if he has the time he could stop by The University of Dis and see Professor Oldfield so he can see his progress with unlocking the ACoNR unit. This gets Gyrus thinking on Abyssal Station Zero and what happened with Todd and The Shadowlith as he wonders what had happened, he knew shadow waves harmed human physiology and psyche but he wonders why they were studying it if it was so hostile with no known positives.

He’s ripped from his thoughts as the train’s wheels screech and the train slowly comes to a stop when over the comm comes the voice of the conductor. “Yeah, Yeah shut up you stupid zoners there’s a blockage on the tracks, seems some pipeworkers decided it’d be a great idea to set up camp on the rails. Hey, you stupid vagrant assho-!” While in the middle of screaming at these so-called vagrants there’s a sudden splattering sound followed by sizzling, Gyrus could recognize this easily.

“Energy weapons, plasma most likely” Gyrus quickly whispers to himself assessing his odds but decides to go up front to see their numbers, he knows he’s two train cars behind the locomotive so he grabs his phase pistol and rushes through the first car to the second when he gets a sudden feeling of dread and hides behind one of the seats as the door to the locomotive swings open and the sound of heavy footfalls.

He hears someone talking. “Monitor says most of them escaped, make sure not to fire on the ones who’ve already escaped.” Gyrus can’t make anything of the voice, it just sounded like the most generic voice he could imagine and what made it worse was what he heard next. “Roger that”

What was bad about who he assumed was a different person was they sounded identical to the other. At this point, Gyrus decides that the best course of action would be getting the jump on them as he is outnumbered and possibly outgunned. As the footsteps get closer Gyrus jumps out of cover and fires his phase pistol twice at the first figure he sees, as each shot hits true there are small ripples in a field around the person but they still recoil from the pain as the phase pistol dispersed their shields, Gyrus doesn’t have enough time to think as another figure level what appears to be an assault rifle at him.

Gyrus doesn’t have enough time to dodge so he braces himself for the unknown millimeter of the bullet, to his surprise instead of ripping flesh he was met with burning viscera as it took a chunk out of his side as blood begins flooding out, Gyrus had to grit his teeth because if he hesitated that could be it. Gyrus began focusing on the phase pistol itself to use his psionics to move around the internals and disable its safety mechanisms, as he was doing this he leveled his pistol to the figure with the energy rifle and fired.

He was not prepared to see the person in front of him to be blasted back as the shields were completely bypassed, he was even less prepared to see the person be completely disintegrated. The one he’d shot earlier begins drawing their weapon but they were too frightened and grasped at air and this mistake would prove to be fatal as it gave Gyrus enough time to enable the safety settings and fire at this strange person, while the first few shots weren’t very effective the shield protecting them didn’t last long as the final shot landed.

With both of his opponents dead Gyrus finally remembers he’s heavily bleeding and has massive burns on his hand holding the phase pistol, as he realizes this he quickly grabs an advanced health hypo and injects it, he feels its regenerative capabilities take effect as the massive hole in his side fills back up with flesh and his burns slowly disappear, during this process, he jokes to himself. “Heh, there’s probably enough of my DNA in the southern underrail that someone would have no problem making a clone of me.”

Now with little delay Gyrus examines the single corpse he has as a reference and identifies two things, one they were wearing some sort of dark grey combat armor, two there was some sort of insignia which appeared to be a glowing monolith. “This doesn’t bode well.” He decides to focus on the next concerning thing, the strange weapon. It wouldn’t be so strange if it weren’t for the fact that the only mass-produced variety of energy weapons were pistols as the supplies to make energy rifles would be too costly to justify the power increase.

Gyrus decides the best course of action would be taking the rifle for further study as he takes it and straps it to his back. In the middle of him strapping the weapon to his back, he hears voices yelling at each other when he realizes that those were the reinforcements. Hearing this Gyrus decides it’s time for him to leave as he opens the emergency exit and sprints out, trying to get as much distance as possible, he hears the shouting grow quiet when he gets far enough away.

* * *

Gyrus doesn’t know how long he’s been running but he thinks it may have been too long when he felt his legs give way under him and collapsed to the ground face-first next to what he thinks is a cave wall, his adrenaline rush must have faded. After around two minutes of trying to get feeling back into his legs, he hears “Hey! What are you doing here!?” Gyrus’s internal monologue turns to internal screaming as he thinks “You’ve got to be kidding me! Haven’t I suffered enough in the last? however long it’s been.”

Gyrus thinks this person might be kicking him but he can’t feel the entirety of his lower body, the only hint he has is that his body is moving to the side. “Get up you vagabond, this is private property!” Gyrus slowly moves his head towards the supposed cave wall only to see a window as he realizes that this is just a stone home. “Oh gosh, I’m sorry! I didn’t realize this was a home, I thought I was in a cavern!”

The person above him sighs and says. “Yeah, yeah, seeing as how I may have roughed you up a bit I might overlook this if you were to say, give a donation” Gyrus couldn’t believe this he was being given the choice of bribes or punishment, after a moment of consideration Gyrus decided he’d rather not learn how northern underrail punishments differ from the south so he painfully stands up feeling his bones creak and hands the person who turned out was a guard twenty stygian coins. The guard eyes them with a suspicious look but still takes them and walks away saying. “And don’t let me catch you again!”

Gyrus stands still for a while longer to steady himself and starts walking to the closest thing to a street looking for some form of refuge and after near half an hour of searching he finds it in “The Hemorrhaging Siphoner”. This tells him two very important things, firstly is that the northern underrail also has siphoners, and secondly they have even worse naming conventions than home. As he walks inside he knows he’s being eyed by many people but at this point, he’s too tired to care as he walks up to the owner and asks. “Got any rooms for rent?”

The owner eyes him cautiously and says. “Yeah, fifteen holos a night.” It’s at this point Gyrus realizes that he neglected to bring any region-specific currency as fumbles around asking if he’ll take stygs, the owner thinks for a moment before saying. “Twenty of ‘em a night” wordlessly Gyrus hands him one hundred, the owner hands over a key with the number five and says something about having a good cycle.

When Gyrus reaches the room he takes note that while clean it’s very barren, after a long day Gyrus collapses on the bed and starts tearing up, even after everything he’s been through killing another person never gets any easier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just terms this time.
> 
> Zoner/Pipeworker: A common insult among those in the southern underrail, it's used to describe someone as lesser
> 
> Stygian coins/Stygs: The common currency of the southern underrail, these coins are made from super steel a highly valuable material
> 
> Shadowlith: To call this strange monolith like structure dark would be an understatement, it's darkness is not the mere lack of reflected light but rather it is nonexistence given form, it exists yet it does not. The Shadowlith was known for releasing "shadow waves"
> 
> Shadow waves: Shadow waves are generated by the Shadowlith and similar structures such as the Black Rock, shadow waves have been shown to be extremely damaging to human physiology and even to the psyche causing cancerous growths, memory loss, and even insanity

**Author's Note:**

> Terms/Characters  
> Underrail: A series of interconnected cave systems and metros that make up the known world
> 
> Rahm-Umbra: An extremely tall cyborg who is suspected of being part of a species known as the godmen, instead of a face he has a metal plate with four lenses.
> 
> Faceless: A secluded group of cyborgs who are believed to have made their home in the deepest caverns


End file.
